The one thing that will be really missing, though, is the diversity of learning that a printed encyclopaedia can generate. While an online encyclopaedia will allow you to follow a web of links related to a subject, you won't go on to the next, unrelated article, and you won't have your eye caught by an unrelated picture.

Wikipedia has a "Random Article" link, which is a good way of wasting ten minutes (or more).

I like to play "Wikington Crescent": Click on Random Article, and see how few clicks it takes you to get to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_tube_statio.... Of course, there are quite a few more rules, but I'm sure I don't need to tell you what they are ...